Archived Information

Goal 2. Reform the United StatesU.S. education system to help make it the best in the world.

The Department’s Goal 2 seeks to help states and local communities strengthen schools and the education infrastructure. This support is needed to attain the Goal 1 objectives of improving the educational performance of all children, so that the nation can meet the economic and social challenges of the 21st century.

The key to improving student performance is a focus upon comprehensive, aligned, and sustained education reform. States and communities—not the Federal Federal government—are developing and implementing challenging academic standards and aligned assessments for every child to meet, which will ensure that all children know that their schools and communities have high expectations for their academic performance. To ensure a focus on the needs and progress of special populations, state assessments are to include all children, including those with disabilities or limited English proficiency, with reasonable adaptations or accommodations for students with special needs. States, school districts, and schools will report disaggregated results from these assessments to show student achievement for limited English proficient students, migrant students, students with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged students, as well as by gender and race/ethnicity. States and districts will use the results of these assessments to identify low-performing schools and will provide additional support to help these schools improve their performance.

An environment conducive to learning is a pre-requisite for success. To learn, students must have schools that are safe and orderly. Highquality learning requires talented and dedicated teachers that provide instruction to support standards. In addition, teachers and students need access to advanced technology that assists in providingthe integrated instruction and helps students develop skills they will need for work and further education. Public school choice allows parents and students greater educational options to select a school program that best meets their particular educational needs and priorities.

Goal 2 includes the following six objectives:

Objective 2A: Every Statestate has challenging standards and aligned assessments for all students in the core academic subjects with meaningful accountability for results. All students must have the opportunity to attain educational excellence. Educational excellence is more likely to occur when schools are held accountable for helping students achieve.

Objective 2B:A talented and dedicated teacher is in every classroom in America. Teachers, who are well-preparedwell-prepared and highly skilled, support, encourage, and inspire student excellence.

Objective 2C:All schools are, safe, drug-free, in good repair and not overcrowded.repair, and free of overcrowding. If students are to learn effectively, schools must provide safe and drug-free environments within modern facilities supportive of learning.

Objective 2D:All families and communities are fully involved in a partnership of shared responsibilities with schools to support school improvement efforts. When families are involved in their children’s education, learning improves. When families are involved in schools, schools improve. Family involvement is an essential part of ensuring educational excellence.

Objective 2E:All students and families are able to choose among high-quality public schools. Public school choice can help schools address the needs and interests of students and families, fostering improved learning.

Objective 2F: Schools use advanced technology for all students and teachers to improve education. Educational technology, when used effectively, can significantly improve teaching and learning in a cost-effective fashion.

Objective 2A: Every StateState has challenging standards and aligned assessments for all students in the core academic subjects, with meaningful accountability for results.

As we begin the 21st century, school systems in the United States face the challenge of ensuring that all students in every school have the opportunity to meet high expectations for achievement. To help meet this challenge, states are implementing system--wide strategies to align curriculum, assessments, teacher training, and instruction with challenging academic standards. State standards establish clear expectations for what students are expected to know and be able to do, and assessments that are aligned with those standards provide information about progress towards meeting those expectations, for all children and especially for at-risk children. States are also developing accountability systems to identify low-performing schools and ensure that their performance improves. All states now have standards in place, but independent reviews suggest that standards vary in rigor across the states, and implementation of standards in schools and classrooms varies as well. In some schools, and most often in high-poverty schools, student achievement and expectations remain low. Systemic changes take time, and helping all students meet higher standards is an ongoing responsibility shared by schools, teachers, students, and families.

Performance Indicators and Targets

  1. All states will have final assessment systems or negotiated agreements that will enable them to meet the criteria in the Title I law—including alignment, inclusion of limited English proficient and special education students, disaggregated reporting, and technical quality—for 2 or more core subjects by 2001.
  2. Eighty percent of schools identified as needing improvement will report receiving assistance from their districts and states by 2005.
  3. An increasing percentage of schools identified as needing improvement will make sufficient progress to move out of school improvement status.

Our Role

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) requires States to have final standards and assessment systems in place by the 2000-012000–2001 school year. To help states meet this statutory requirement, the Department of Education has widely circulated guidance and held training workshops for states on the evidence that they will need to submit to the Department to verify that standards and assessments are implemented. The Department is relying on peer review teams, including researchers and state and local practitioners, to review evidence on state standards and assessment systems and provide assistance. The Department is responsible for reviewing state accountability systems to ensure that they appropriately identify schools needing improvement. Effective implementation of standards and assessments is a continuous process of improvement. The Department's ongoing monitoring efforts will document completion of initial implementation and also provide support for improvements in the quality of states' standards, assessments, and accountability systems.

Meeting the goal of helping all children reach high standards is a cross-cutting objective in which every FederalFederal elementary and secondary education program has a role to play to support activities aligned to strengthen achievement of standards for all children. The Department’s largest elementary and secondary program, Title I of ESEA, focuses especially on ensuring improved outcomes against standards for students in economically disadvantaged communities who are at risk of educational failure. In addition, the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 1998 requires that states use their FederalFederal vocational education funding to support the development and implementation of challenging academic standards. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires that children with disabilities be included in state and district assessment programs, with appropriate accommodations.

Core Strategies

Ensure that states implement challenging standards, assessments, and accountability systems.

Use a peer review process to examine the evidence submitted by states about their adoption of challenging performance standards, assessments, and accountability systems.

Provide technical assistance to states through peer consultants, regional labs, and regional training centers to support Statesstates in obtaining the information and assistance they need to help all students meet the standards.

Complete review and continue to monitor completion of final assessments as needed, through additional approvals, waivers, timelines, and compliance agreements.

Ensure that states make assessments inclusive of students with limited English proficiency (LEP) and students with disabilities through appropriate accommodations on assessments.

Provide technical assistance and guidance to ensure that high-stakes assessments are implemented so as not to unfairly deny educational benefits to students on the basis of race, national origin, sex, or disability.

Improve low-performing schools.

Monitor and enforce provisions for Statestate and local assistance to support effective school improvement and meaningful restructuring for low-performing schools and public school choice for students in schools that do not improve.

Develop new real-time reporting on the longitudinal progress of low-performing Title I schools through the Integrated Performance and Benchmarking System (IPBS).

Provide direct assistance to, and help to build the capacity of, states and local educational agencies to turn around low-performing schools, including by assisting states in strengthening their accountability systems.

Facilitate and monitor ED-FLEX.

Provide technical assistance to ED-FLEX states, including developing a synthesis of best practices for using the ED-FLEX authority.

Monitor ED-FLEX states for timeliness and accuracy of results-based submissions and follow-up improvement actions.

Research and development

Examine different accountability approaches to identify best practices in developing systems that support improved student performance, with attention to disaggregating data for minorities and special populations.

Develop a long-term research and analytic agenda to identify desirable features of standards and assessments and alignment of classroom instruction to the standards that Statesstates can apply to benchmark the quality of their own standards and assessments.

Objective 2B: A talented and dedicated teacher is in every classroom in America.

Educators, parents, and policy-makers agree that every child deserves a caring, competent, and qualified teacher. Research shows that the quality of teaching in our classrooms is the most important in-school factor in improving student achievement. That is why policy-makers at all levels are focusing on teacher quality—specifically on the issues of teacher preparation, licensing and certification standards, professional development, and school leadership—to improve teaching and learning in the nation’s schools.

We face numerous national challenges, however, as we seek to ensure effective teaching in all of our classrooms. Over the next decade school districts will need to hire more than 2 million teachers, over half of whom will be first-time teachers. In the past, states have met the quantity challenge by lowering standards for teachers. This is no longer a viable option. Teachers today need to know and be able to do more than ever before to successfully educate an increasingly diverse student population to new, higher standards. These concerns about quantity and quality in turn create issues of equity as students in high-poverty areas—those who need the best prepared teachers—often are taught by those who are the least prepared to address the challenges that poverty brings to the classroom.

If we are to meet these challenges, we must end the traditional disconnect between K-12 and postsecondary education systems by promoting new K-16 partnerships. As the states implement new, higher standards for K-12 students, a reexamination of teacher standards and the content of teacher education programs is essential. Teaching and learning in our nation will improve only when institutions of higher education connect more fully and directly to K-12 schools so that the initial preparation of teachers and their ongoing professional development are informed by research, grounded in practical experience, and aligned with K-12 student content and performance standards. Meeting our nation’s teaching quality challenges also requires harnessing the power of new technologies to better prepare and provide ongoing high-quality professional development to the widest audience possible.

While K-16 partnerships can improve the preparation, licensing, and ongoing professional development of teachers, they do not directly address the strong school leadership that must exist to support quality teaching. Ensuring the conditions necessary for effective teaching begins with developing school principals and other administrators who understand instruction and know how to create learning communities within schools in which teachers and students can do their best work.

Performance Indicators and Targets

  1. Increasing numbers of States will develop standards for teachers that are linked to standards for students and include, as part of the process of certification and licensure of new teachers, a content knowledge test and performance-based assessment of teaching skills.
  2. Increasing percentages of new and experienced teachers will report that they feel very well prepared to(1)implement new, higher content standards; (2) address the needs of students with limited English proficiency;(3) address the needs of students with disabilities; and(4) integrate educational technology into the grade or subject they teach.
  3. The number of National Board Certified Teachers will continually increase and will reach 50,000 by 2005.
  4. The percentages of teachers whose professional development activities focus on an in-depth study of their subject matter and include common planning periods, mentoring, and weekly collaborative meetings with other teachers will increase annually.
  5. The percentage of teachers who leave teaching within their first three years in the profession will decrease.
  6. For key subject areas and high-poverty districts, the percentage of individuals who are teaching on waivers will decline 10%10 percent over the next five years.
Our Role

The role of the Department of Education is to support and encourage state and district efforts to improve teaching in the United States. The Education Department addresses this objective through programs aimed at improving teacher quality, including the Teacher Quality Enhancement Grants Program (Title II HEA) and the Eisenhower Professional Development Program, and through support of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The Education Department addresses teacher training through its service program support for at-risk and special education students, and its support for particular instruction areas such as reading and technology. In addition, the Education Department supports research on policies and practices that will improve teaching and learning in the United States, and the Education Department supports reporting of data on teacher quality through the Title II HEA accountability reports.

Core Strategies

The Education Department’s cross-office professional development team will continue to coordinate the Department’s core teacher improvement activities that support good teaching by sharing information and strategies.

Promote K-16 partnerships to improve the recruitment, preparation, and retention of new teachers.

Support strategies for reducing shortages of qualified teachers in high-need subject and geographic areas, including a national job bank and clearinghouse on teacher recruitment, and a program to recruit and train both military personnel and other mid-career professionals to become teachers.

Support fundamental improvements in teacher education at institutions of higher education through both financial supports tied to performance accountability, and public reporting of accountability data through Title II HEA.

Launch large-scale, high-quality distance learning for initial teacher preparation and professional development.

Identify and study Effective Teacher Preparation Program award-winners and aggressively disseminate best practices and lessons learned.

Identify low-performing districts and encourage the use of Federal Federal funds to increase the availability of high-quality teachers, and to promote the allocation of high-quality teachers within and among districts without discrimination.

Develop and support rigorous licensing standards for teachers.

Support stakeholder organizations in developing teacher performance-based standards and licensing, including the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) for licensing of new teachers, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) for certifying accomplished teachers.

Provide financial assistance to states to subsidize the candidate fee for teachers seeking National Board Certification.

Strengthen comprehensive Statestate licensing systems for new teachers by providing support through Title II HEA.

Strengthen and coordinate professional development.

Focus all FederalFederal professional development dollars (for example, Eisenhower, Title I, Vocational Education, and Bilingual Education) so that they support intensive, high qualityhigh-quality professional development that is focused on results for students.

Support Inductioninduction programs for new teachers and professional development in the critical shortage areas of bilingual education, special education, and instructional technology.

Disseminate aggressively results-based professional development guidance, including the Principles of High-Quality Professional Development, and disseminate best practices and lessons learned from award-winning Model Professional Development Programs.

Strengthen school leadership.

Work with Congress to enact legislation that would lead to the development of innovative approaches to recruiting, preparing, and supporting current and prospective superintendents, principals, and assistant principals as instructional leaders.

Create a network of outstanding principals who support each other’s work and mentor aspiring school leaders.

Study the practices of effective instructional leaders and disseminate best practices and lessons learned.

Support research and development.

Support research on teacher testing, including analyses of current practices, ways to improve existing tests, and viable alternatives.

Produce biennial reports on teacher quality.

Coordinate research efforts across principal offices within the Department to facilitate a coherent department--wide approach to research and evaluation on teaching and teacher development, and to ensure a stable data collection system on indicators of teaching quality.